I had to write a program that would analyze a large amount of data. In fact, too much data to actually analyze all of. So I resorted to random sampling of the data, but even so, it was going to take a long time. For various reasons, the simplistic program I started with would stop running, and I’d lose the progress I made on crunching through the mountain of data.

You’d think I would have started with a restartable program so that I wouldn’t have to worry about interruptions, but I guess I’m not that smart, so I had to get there iteratively.

The result worked well, and for the next time I need a program that can pick up where it left off and make progress against an unreasonable goal, here’s the skeleton of what I ended up with:

import os, os.path, random, shutil, sys
import cPickle as pickle


class Work(object):
    """The state of the computation so far."""

    def __init__(self):
        self.items = []
        self.results = Something_To_Hold_Results()

    def initialize(self):
        self.items = Get_All_The_Possible_Items()
        random.shuffle(self.items)

    def do_work(self, nitems):
        for _ in xrange(nitems):
            item = self.items.pop()
            Process_An_Item_And_Update_Results(item)
        Display_Results_So_Far()
        


def main(argv):
    pname = "work.pickle"
    bname = "work.pickle.bak"
    if os.path.exists(pname):
        # A pickle exists! Restore the Work from
        # it so we can make progress.
        with open(pname, 'rb') as pfile:
            work = pickle.load(pfile)
    else:
        # This must be the first time we've been run.
        # Start from the beginning.
        work = Work()
        work.initialize()

    while True:
        # Process 25 items, then checkpoint our progress.
        work.do_work(25)
        if os.path.exists(pname):
            # Move the old pickle so we can't lose it.
            shutil.move(pname, bname)
        with open(pname, 'wb') as pfile:
            pickle.dump(work, pfile, -1)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.argv[1:])

The “methods” in the Strange_Camel_Case are pseudo-code where the actual particulars would get filled in. The Work object is pickled every once in a while, and when the program starts, it reconstitutes the Work object from the pickle so that it can pick up where it left off.

The program will run forever, and display results every so often. I just let it keep running until it seemed like the random sampling had gotten me good convergence on the extrapolation to the truth. Another use of this skeleton might need a real end condition.